Mile High Mountaineering Salute: A Perfect Pack for Climbers

Dec 28, 2012

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Senior year at the University of Colorado, Boulder was a big one for Jeff Popp.
That was the year when, as captain of the U.C. snowboard team, he was honored as
a first-team All-American. It was also the year that he decided to avoid the “white
collar path” and start an outdoor company. Popp graduated from Boulder and singled out backpacks as the category that could most benefit from a makeover.
And, just like that, Mile High Mountaineering (MHM) was born.

The
company offers a small but solid line of packs sized and purposed for
everything from urban commuting to multi-day trekking. For the past few months
we’ve been putting MHM’s 34-liter Salute Pack—the flagship of their
line—through rigorous field tests. We hauled it up multipitch sport climbs in
Spain, stuffed it full of quickdraws and climbing shoes for a weeklong trip in
France, and wore it on a 25k hut traverse in the German Alps.

The standout feature of the Salute is its unique S-shaped zipper, which winds
around the top compartment and down the packs’ body. This made for lightning-fast access to everything we took with us, from energy bars at the top to our
last-resort rain shell stuffed in the bottom.

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